Clara Ibarra is the coordinator for Democracy Now! en Español and founder of the Grandparents StoryLab, an intergenerational podcast project that connects the youngest and oldest generations through the power of storytelling. IndyKids spoke with her in spring 2025.
Describe your work with Democracy Now!
Clara: My experience has been great. Every day, I translate the headlines. If you watch Democracy Now!, the first 15 minutes are headlines. Me and a team of five people translate, and we make sure the words are correctly translated, the people are correctly represented. We make sure that it is Spanish that everyone in the U.S., in Spain, or in Latin America would understand, to make it as universal as possible. At Democracy Now!, I’ve seen how the stories of individuals, of people like you and me are the real news. When you go to what is happening to the people and how they are experiencing it, that is where you find the core of the story. Many times in the headlines we will have statements from the people in charge, like the U.N. or presidents, but it is the voices of everyday people that are most important. At the core of every story is the voices of everyday people, and it’s all about finding that connection.
What inspired you to create Grandparents StoryLab?
Clara: A big inspiration was that a lot of my friends were having kids, but they were being born and raised in the city without the presence of an older generation. I grew up in Colombia, and I was very close to my grandmother, and I realized that that was not going to be a reality for me if I had a kid, and it was not the reality for a lot of kids in the city. Many of them didn’t have elders in their lives. So I thought we could create that for them. We can bring elders and kids together, make that conversation and record it.
Why do you like working with elders and young kids?
Clara: There is so much wisdom from elders or older adults in our lives—so many experiences and so much that they have seen. I just wanted to pick their brains. And I wanted to pick their brains using younger brains, which is even more fun. In Senegal, they say that every time a person dies, it is as if you were burning a library. At Grandparents StoryLab, we want to store those libraries. We want to go into the elders’ minds and record some of that.
